Race to the Stratosphere: Manned Scientific Ballooning in America

In 1930, no human had traveled in the stratosphere and returned to say anything useful about it. Although flights into it of small balloon systems called “balloonsondes” equipped with automatic devices for recording its characteristics were growing in frequency and sophistication, the few intrepid aeronauts who dared to reach it usually lost their lives in the trying. It remained a human challenge, like scaling the highest mountain peak or sounding the deepest ocean abyss. It also renamed a difficult place to understand, a frontier for science as well as for exploration. The stratospheric flights of Auguste Piccard in 1931 and 1932 changed the way people thought about conquering the stratosphere. Although he learned very little about this strange new realm, Piccard demonstrated how this atmospheric barrier could be overcome. His first attempt and then spectacular success stimulated an explosion of flights in the United States, Europe, and the Soviet Union. In America, the first to fly were Navy balloonists sponsored by the “A Century of Progress” World’s Fair and Exposition in Chicago. Then came Army aeronauts flying on Explorer, backed by the National Geographic Society and the Army Air Corps. By mid-decade, Piccard’s twin brother Jean and his American wife Jeannette had flown into the stratosphere, and both pushed for means to return once again after World War II.